POETRY

POETRY

LIVERPOOL, 3RD MAY 1941

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment2 min read1.8K views

This is one of the great public, civic

spaces of the world – the museum,

the library, the gallery, the court house,

Wellington’s column, the Steble fountain,

the Empire Theatre, Lime Street Station,

St George’s Hall,  St John’s Gardens, vistas

of the river, the Wirral, the Welsh hills…

 

During the worst raid of the Liverpool Blitz

the museum was set ablaze – a bomb,

one of so many, supposedly

for the docks, that razed history, neighbourhoods.

My grandmother, Liverpool Welsh – who took tea

with Buffalo Bill and was offered a place

in a music hall chorus line but refused,

being the eldest of thirteen, her Da

at sea and her Ma at the sherry –

described to me in detail many times

the natural history collection:

stuffed walruses, condors and Don Pedro,

a retired Barnum and Bailey elephant –

all immolated, and washed away.

 

While mummy, daddy, grandma see ‘Evita’,

she and I make our way to the museum,

holding hands. I talk about history,

public and personal – my father,

a stranger, a London Jew, in transit

that May Saturday, joining a line

of desperate buckets. She listens –

in my company a serious,

concerned seven year old – and asks if fires

can ever be put out. ‘Yes, always…

eventually,’ I say. We decide

to explore as many floors as we can

from the top – space, dinosaur poo, bugs

but have no time for masks and totems –

and pause, me for rest, her to draw,

before, leaving a moment for ice cream,

we walk in the dusk, past the statues,

up the incline to the theatre crowds.

 

 

Note: first published April 2017.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

THE RULES OF THE GAME

David Selzer By David Selzer3 Comments2 min read1.7K views

I had my first hair cut when I was three.

(I had been tricked, bamboozled, farfirt).

My grandpa took me to his barber’s –

redolent with banter and tobacco smoke –

near the junction of Cricklewood Lane

and Finchley Road. It was frequented

by his card playing cronies. I watched him

have his hair trimmed and some strands combed over.

I was invited to try the high chair

but, no sooner there, I was begowned

and the scissors flashed. ‘Fetch a policeman!’

he always claimed I called out. I imagine

a shop full of Jewish refugees laughed

uneasily at my accidental vits.

 

He smoked Craven A in an ebony

cigarette holder, drank tea from a glass

with a silver plated handle and snacked

on Rakusen’s matzos coated with

Colman’s French Mustard. When I was eight

he taught me to shuffle a deck of cards,

perfumed with nicotine, from hand to hand

then thumbs and forefingers like a croupier.

He taught me Gin Rummy where the twos

of any suit are also deuces and wild

like the jokers. We could choose whether aces

were high or low. I liked the black cards best.

 

When we were playing he would sometimes pause

to tell me stories: of Kiev; his escape

from Russia; my father; my grandmother.

We continued to play well into my teens.

There were questions I did not know how to ask

and ones then I simply did not know to ask.

I pass the tiny tales on like pieces

of a mosaic. ‘Remember’, he said,

‘for patience whichever way you shuffle

first the jokers remove!’

 

 

Note: first published 2016.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
3 Comments
POETRY

‘EAST END GIRL DANCING THE LAMBETH WALK’: BILL BRANDT, 1939

David Selzer By David Selzer4 Comments1 min read2.1K views

He’s set it up, of course. Or, rather, framed it.
There’d be no feigning this young woman’s delight
in being ‘free and easy’ and doing
‘as you darn well pleasy’. She’s got her best blouse on,
with shoulder puffs, her sister’s shoes, which fit her now,
black ankle socks and shoulder length, unpermed hair
freshly washed – and waved, probably with Kirby grips.
Doin’ the walk, she lifts the hem of her skirt,
revealing her slip – and smiles coquettishly.

Beside her is a line, a queue almost of
female acolytes. (The only boy looks away).
They’re pre-pubescent, excited, nervous at what they see:
grown up clothes, shapely legs, unimaginable bust,
a sensuousness that, unwilled, will be theirs.

Down the street of terraced houses, symmetrical
as barracks, a woman strides, her back turned
on this miracle: a girl who knows
she will never grow old – ‘Any ev’ning,
any day…Doin’ the Lambeth Walk.’ Oi!

 

 

Note: first published April 2009.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
4 Comments
POETRY

INTIMATIONS OF MORTALITY

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.7K views

That Easter holiday when I was nine,

I filled the days of lakeland drizzle

with the contents of the hotel’s bookcase.

I remember one page from a Great War

history. Only the uniform

denoted humanity. What could have

been a face was a smear in sepia

mud. Wars and the aftermath of wars

shaped childhood. In brief sun, we visited

Wordsworth’s schoolroom with its harsh, scrawled desks.

I was fussed to a snapshot. And there I am

scowling at the brightness…

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment
POETRY

NOW YOU ARE THREE

David Selzer By David Selzer5 Comments1 min read2K views

Words fly from your mouth like curious birds

or drift, like seeds, on a late summer’s day.

How rich your lexicon is!  Language learning

is encrypted – a secular miracle.

 

You do a cherubic ‘Twinkle, Twinkle,

Little Star’ – and a thrash metal version!

You know your first and surname – sound them clear

as for a roll-call, announcing your

determined, fragile independence.

 

“What’s dat?”, “Why?” You are avid for knowledge,

understanding.  Someone says, “Heavens above.”

“What’s ‘heaven’ mean, Grandma and Grandpa?”

We haven’t the heart to say, “Only the sky.”

 

You do not know and never will just how much

your first three years have changed our lives: seeing you

squirm, smile, crawl, walk, talk – begin to master

letters and colours. You paint in rich hues

with brush, sliced potato, your tiny hands.

You touch black print with pale finger tips,

as if to gently conjure it to speech,

reveal to you its coded, grown-up secrets.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
5 Comments
POETRY

INTENSIVE

David Selzer By David Selzer1 Comment1 min read1.6K views

‘The body is…an extraordinary laboratory of possibility.’

Anthony Gormley

 

One sunny September Saturday I left

the Welcome Collection’s airy reading room,

stopped at the Picasso mural then took

the wide circular staircase past floors of

exemplary, aesthetic exhibits

of grave clothes, dentist drills, tranquillisers,

body parts, through the café and bookshop

into Euston Road’s fumy hugger-mugger.

 

I heard the siren first, behind me, saw

the traffic, past Euston towards St Pancras,

begin to slow as one of Great Ormond Street’s

acute care ambulances barrelled

down the outside lane then suddenly swerved

through an emergency services gap

in the central barrier and drove towards

the three lanes of oncoming vehicles

paused at the lights where the ambulance

would turn right – and I paused, amidst London’s

extravagant roar, moved by all this

for such a little life.

 

 

 

Pages:

Share

David Selzer By David Selzer
1 Comment